Christie crafts a moderate message

Governor Christie made sure everyone knew he opposed the shutdown of the federal government.

He made that clear at stops across the state, both for his campaign and for his duties as governor, as well as in discussions with reporters at the Capitol.

Indeed, in the lists of winners and losers being compiled after the shutdown was resolved last week, Christie could arguably turn up in the winners column. The shutdown, in a dysfunctional Washington, played neatly into his narrative, one that casts him as the bipartisan outsider tough enough to knock some sense into a similarly dysfunctional Trenton and, inferentially, into national politics as well.

Christie, who is seeking a huge victory next month that could propel him to the top of the field of GOP candidates for president in 2016, is rooting his appeal in a message of getting things done across the aisle, forged above all in his cooperation with President Obama last fall after Superstorm Sandy.

But for Christie, the shutdown issue — and his brand as a bipartisan dealmaker — is not as clear-cut as he’s portrayed it.

Christie has political ties to GOP members of Congress who advocated the shutdown, including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Tea Party leader who had questioned whether it was actually a bad thing for the federal government to default on its debt.

Christie also endorsed Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate who lost to Cory Booker in last week’s special U.S. Senate election in New Jersey. Lonegan, a former Bogota mayor and longtime Tea Party firebrand, openly supported the shutdown and cited Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the leader of the shutdown movement, as a hero.

And it was the governor himself who dared Democratic state legislators to shut down New Jersey’s government during a dispute over taxes and the state budget in 2010.

“I’m going to the governor’s residence. … I’m going to open up a beer, order a pizza, I’m going to watch the Mets,” Christie told lawmakers. “When you decide to reopen the government, you give me a call, and I’ll come back.”

Christie has a new campaign ad that touts his bipartisan cooperation on issues like last year’s new teacher-tenure law. The ad also features images from Sandy, an issue that gets Christie high praise from New Jersey voters.

Sometimes in politics, good rhetoric can overcome a mixed record. Christie had support from 93 percent of likely Republican voters in the most recent Rutgers-Eagleton Poll — but also 68 percent from independents and 25 percent from Democrats.

“Many voters do seem to accept the message; the fact that we find nearly 60 percent call Christie a ‘moderate’ is some evidence of this,” said David Redlawsk, a political science professor who is director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.

“He has positioned himself in the middle rhetorically, and that seems to matter more than what he has actually done,” Redlawsk said.

The shutdown played a prominent role in the recent gubernatorial debate between Christie and Democratic challenger Barbara Buono. The longtime state lawmaker from Middlesex County told Christie he couldn’t have it both ways — labeling the shutdown a disgrace, but not withdrawing his support for those who favored it.

“If this governor doesn’t put the blame and responsibility where it is and exercise some real leadership, then he is as guilty as the guy driving the train off the cliff,” Buono said.

But Christie said he can support other Republican candidates without supporting everything they say and do.

Christie also had a quick explanation for why he wasn’t preaching a bipartisan message in 2010 when faced with a government shutdown in New Jersey, which was ultimately averted.

“That’s called negotiating, and you have to let people know where you’re going to draw the line in the sand,” Christie said.

To be sure, Christie himself didn’t call for or openly praise the shutdown of the federal government, the first since 1995. In contrast, Christie has been one of the leading Republican voices in recent years to advocate for Republican principles but also call for a compromise when possible to pass meaningful reforms.

In New Jersey, he’s enacted a budget that expanded Medicaid, a new feature provided under Obama’s signature health care law. And the governor has also worked with Democrats to pass budgets, cap local property tax hikes, cut public employee benefits and overhaul the teacher tenure rules.

But Christie has also fought Democrats over affordable housing, same-sex marriage, minimum wage and, most bitterly, the makeup of the state Supreme Court. And those disputes have not played out behind the scenes.

The governor has called lawmakers “jerk,” “numbnuts” and “SOB.” He also once urged reporters to “take the bat out” on Democratic Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, the 78-year-old grandmother from Teaneck.

And it was Christie who campaigned last September for King in his home state of Iowa, calling the Tea Party representative in a significant presidential primary state a “leader,” according to local accounts.

That support came after King was quoted in Roll Call, a leading congressional news agency, challenging House Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders to swear a “blood oath” that they would support putting a repeal of the health care law in appropriations bills, even if it brought on a government shutdown.

“I’d like to challenge them to make that pledge,” King said in 2010. “I’d like [Boehner] to make that commitment that if the president shuts down the government, there wouldn’t be a repeat of 1995 where the House caved.”

Also last September, Christie spoke at a fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was then working to help the GOP keep its majority in the House. The latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll found more than half of New Jersey voters blame congressional Republicans for causing the shutdown.

Christie also has ties to the Koch brothers. The billionaire industrialists had no public position on the shutdown, but The New York Times reported earlier this month that their financing of pressure groups helped promote the strategy of linking a repeal of the health care law to a threat to shut down the federal government.

The governor appeared with them in June 2011 before a crowd of wealthy GOP donors at a private gathering in Vail, Colo. Koch Industries also gave more than $3 million last year to the Republican Governors Association, an organization that is supporting Christie’s reelection bid and one he is set to lead next year.

And even as polls in New Jersey showed the shutdown was incredibly unpopular among state voters — only 25 percent sided with congressional Republicans in the Rutgers-Eagleton survey — Lonegan openly supported the strategy and praised its architects, including Cruz, on his way to losing by double digits to Booker.

“Steve and I have believed and still believe in so many of the same things,” Christie said while endorsing Lonegan on Aug. 20.

Benjamin Dworkin, a political science professor and director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said that in the end it’s the bipartisan accomplishments that stick with the voters.

“What people are going to remember are the things that actually happened, the laws that actually happened,” Dworkin said.

“Most of the criticism of Christie as being too partisan, I think, is inside baseball,” Dworkin said. “If it was a headline, it was a headline for a moment, and then it disappeared.”